Health spending on rabies $26.4 million annually in Vietnam

Friday, September 29, 2017 13:38

The estimated public health expenditures on rabies disease diagnostics, prevention, and control in Vietnam is VND600 billion ($26.4 million) annually, said Deputy Head of the Department of Preventive Medicine Dang Quang Tan at a meeting in the northern province of Bac Giang yesterday.

Veterinarians are injecting vaccine for a dog (Photo: SGGP)

The meeting was jointly held by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in response of the World Rabies Day with the theme “No more dead people because of rabies”.

Mr. Quang said that cost of a rabies prevention is VND1.5 million. Yet each year around 400,000 people is bitten in the country and total treatment cost is VND 600 billion.

Vaccination for a dog costs VND20,000-40,000 but health expenditure on victim of dog bite is VND1.5-2 million a person. Because of large sum of treatment, many people neglected vaccination; consequently, it is estimated that the number of human deaths from rabies is 100 per year.

From 2005 to 2016, rabies claimed 1,055 lives in the country. Apart from this, in nine months of 2017, the disease claimed 56 lives. Most of deaths are living in the mountainous northern provinces and North Central region as prevention task in these localities is not effective with low human and veterinary vaccination.

The country has over 7.7 million dogs and over 3.8 million households feed dog, said Deputy Chief of the Department of Animal Health under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. However, just around 2.9 million dogs have been vaccinated accounting for 41 percent.

As per the government’s decision No. 90/ ND - CP effective on September 15, 2017 on the administrative penalties in the field of veterinary, residents will be fined up between VND600,000 (US$26.36) and VND800,000 ($35.14) for letting out their out dogs without a leash or muzzle

Ho Chi Minh City has collected stray dogs and next time, Hanoi will set up team to dogs that wander off in the streets.

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